Here’s a quick guide to these important basics:
Relaxation
Martial artists, like those engaged in most other physical activities, must learn to relax. Tension is your enemy. After developing the ability to do some basic techniques in a relaxed fashion, the techniques must be practiced thousands of times to imprint the movements into the body and the brain. But the practitioner must always be relaxed.
If you want to throw a good front punch, you must relax your upper body including the muscles in your face. Do a small experiment, please. Try to get a tense, tough, mean look on your face and simultaneously try to completely relax your upper body.
You can’t. It’s impossible. Your face and your upper body must both relax simultaneously. Then, and only then, can you punch effectively. If you remain tense, effective punching is nigh impossible. Your “punch,” if you can throw it at all, will inevitably be slow and weak.
Physics
Kinetic energy, or “moving energy,” in this case the energy you deliver to whatever you are punching, is directly proportional to the mass you can generate by the use of your body mass and directly proportional to the square of the velocity (speed) with which your hand strikes its target.
Said in a slightly different way, the mass delivered is how much of your entire body mass you can recruit into your punch and deliver to your target. If you double the mass you deliver, you double the kinetic energy delivered to the target.
In other words, if you increase the mass you deliver from one unit to two units, you increase the amount of kinetic energy delivered by a punch from one unit to two units. You double the kinetic energy delivered.
Nurture the Basics at a Traditional Japanese Martial Arts Organization
SMAA is a martial arts organization dedicated to preserving traditional Japanese budo in the west. To get more details about joining, call (734) 720-0330 or submit a contact form here.
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